


I Wanted to Stick by You, Tony Stark

by KayGryffin



Series: Stuck Together [7]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Adopted Peter Parker, Ashes Scene in Avengers: Infinity War Part 1, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Canonical Character Death, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, POV Peter Parker, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter-centric, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Protective Peter, Protective Tony Stark, Spider-Man: Homecoming Spoilers, Superfamily (Marvel), Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Why Did I Write This?, dad tony stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-03 22:11:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14578725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayGryffin/pseuds/KayGryffin
Summary: WARNING: Infinity War spoilers. Canonical character death will ensue....He has his share of slip ups, obviously, because nobody’s perfect but Dad has come to forgive him for them. Sure, he was pretty steamed about that for a while, but even Dad admits the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is looking to become a remarkable influence of good for the city....As the time winds down, Peter recounts the five points he’d agreed to when Tony allowed him to take up the mantle of Spider-Man, and the regrets he has obtained from the life he has led.





	I Wanted to Stick by You, Tony Stark

**Author's Note:**

> So I was asked if I was ever going to continue as I promised with the Stuck Together series, and I hope this suffices as an answer. This is a story in a separate series of Peter’s own, and I have another one to edit before I throw it on here. I’m uploading this one first because the plot bunnies had their way with me and this will set the tone for Peter’s motivations and drivers as he becomes his own hero.

Part one of the Deal is to be safe.

Peter thinks he does a decent enough job at that. He has his share of slip ups, obviously, because nobody’s perfect but Dad has come to forgive him for them (up to and including the time he sort of kind of accidentally slipped and fell into stopping a contraband ring dealing with the selling of weaponized Chitauri technology run by his [very much former] crush’s father). Sure, he was pretty steamed about that for a while (five whole months Dad enforced a curfew; would’ve gone into summertime if Happy, godsend he is, didn’t vouch for his ‘reformed’ behavior), but even Dad admits sometimes that except for a few bursts of unstoppable impulsivity, the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is looking to become a remarkable influence of good for the city.

Peter can’t wait for the day that he says “for the world” but Peter figures it’s best to perhaps start smart and start small like Dad says. Help old ladies cross the street, stop petty thefts and muggings, help kids find their parents, help cats out of trees—the basics of heroic deeds, as Dad says, though Peter sometimes can’t help but get a little mad at that because did Iron Man get his start doing any of those things? No, Iron Man got his start by blowing up the original Stark Industries arc reactor and never had to try and get a screeching child to calm down enough to even say what the problem is, but Spider-Man apparently has to, which is all part of the Deal; the agreement set up between Peter and his dad after three weeks deliberation and two interventions courtesy of Viz and Uncle Rhodey, because they had sense enough to know that Tony can’t just make him stop, especially after Siberia.

The deal has only a few rules. One to be safe. Two to check in. Peter does this often, not that he has much of a choice either which way, the suit has a tracker that Dad’s installed and his StarkPhone constantly uploads his location to FRIDAY’s servers. However, Peter still calls Dad before he goes out on patrol, lets him know where his things are in case things go wrong and where he plans to patrol for the night and listens to Dad bitch about how he stays all the way out in Queens to do a lot of patrols and how it’s ridiculous when alllll the same stuff happens in Midtown anyways and would allow Peter to properly test out the tech that he went through lengths to develop, and then he listens to it again when he’s done for the day and finished up and exhausted from the mundane but nonetheless important job.

Three is to be smart. Kind of like being safe, but still its own separate commandment because Peter has done some pretty stupid things in the name of doing good, and he has done good, but he also came home with a itty bitty graze of a gunshot wound and Dad was not a happy camper when he found all the blood on the marble countertop where Peter was sitting trying to stitch the wound close with a sewing kit he’d bought in a panic from the dollar store. He didn’t even let him patrol for like a week, even though it was all good two days later because his healing is apparently ridiculously out of whack.

Four is to keep hidden. Dad always stresses the importance of this one because as much as he doesn’t want the world knowing that they’re even father and son, he really doesn’t want it known that Peter Parker is the Spider-Man. Even made it a point not to keep Spider-Man out of the official report from the airport incident, Viz told Peter, because if Ross knows he was there then he’d have to register, and if he registers the country knows who he is, watches out for where he is, makes decisions about his status of citizenship because of what he is, and it scares Peter because he knows that his Dad is just trying to keep him safe, keep the world safe, that it’s a necessary evil and all but the fact that Dad has to sleep in a bed made of broken deals makes him uneasy. It makes Peter upset that Dad has to live his life in the palm of the government, his every move monitored and his status as free constantly in the balance. He’d cry about it, but it would only upset Dad, and he’s got enough on his plate that’s more important than his nearly grown kid, and to that end, Peter’s made sacrifices of his own to make sure Dad barely has to worry about him anymore, which is why he’s agreed to these five rules in the first place.

One is to be safe.

Two is to check in.

Three is to be smart.

Four is to stay hidden.

And Five is Mr. Stark.

Mr. Stark is an old rule that Dad’s reinforced more so after Peter’s become Spider-Man than before. Because the adoption is not announced to the public and the world is unaware, Peter’s not allowed to talk about Dad like he has a personal relationship with him, he has to act like he’s never met him a day in his life, pretend that every time in science class Dr. Connors shows a video of one of Dad’s old videos that it’s just another famous scientist rather than his own father, and now, when he’s approached by Iron Man in front of people, even in costume, he has to say “Iron Man” or “Mr. Stark”, because while the whole world knows Iron Man is Tony they don’t know he has a kid and it would only take a few moments for Peter’s social worker, one of the very few who knows outside of their family unit, to put two and two together if Spider-Man was to be recorded and broadcasted calling Iron Man, Tony Stark, Dad, and then it’d all be over—Peter would go back to the foster homes, back to the uncaring system and he’d lose his family again, he’d lose a dad again, his last vestiges of family again, and he’s afraid of what that would do to him, of how that would be the final straw that broke him, and he’s been afraid of that so much so that the thought of not agreeing to that rule terrified him.

But he didn’t know, watching Dr. Strange disintegrate into ash, how terrifying it is to know he is on death’s door and unable to call out to his father in the way he wanted to, the way he needed to. He can feel it overcoming him from the inside out, his body giving way without permission, and he knows that Dad’s made it into the half of the universe that isn’t going to go; isn’t going to disappear into nothing, and he knows that and he should be relieved it’s him and not Dad but he knows this’ll damn near break Dad so he wants to hold on, wants to stay not for himself but because Dad needs him, because Pops isn’t around anymore and they’re halfway across the galaxy and very alone and it’s been Peter and Dad this whole time, ever since Siberia and it’s been Peter who’s seen the anxiousness that Dad tries to hide, it’s been Peter who wakes up in the middle of the night when Dad stumbles into the house after spending his whole night fighting his demons with invention, and Dad needs him, he can’t leave Dad like this, can’t do this to Dad, doesn't want to do this Dad, is being forced to do this to his loving father, the man who took him in, the man who taught him how to be, the man who taught him how he wanted to be.

Peter stumbles forward. He doesn’t feel good, and he tells Dad, but he doesn’t, he tells Mr. Stark, because that’s the deal, and Peter keeps his deals with Dad because that’s how precious he is to Peter and he feels like he’s never said it enough to Dad, how much he needs him, how much he loves him, because he does love him; loves him with every fiber of the being that’s failing him now. Without Dad, life would just be alone, life would just be an empty grey of complacency and acceptance, and with Dad it was more than that, it’s been a burst of bright color of encouragement to be more, to become the person he’s wanted to be and not just another lonely child on the streets of Queens, and when he falls into Dad’s chest he can’t help the burst of pain in his chest because Dad’s his hero and Dad can’t save him from this and the last thing he ever wants from this world is to cause Dad more pain in his lifetime.

Dad’s had enough pain in his life. He’s lost more people than Peter really knows and Peter doesn’t want to add to this list, but he knows the choice is not his, he can feel it as he loses the sensation of his dad’s arm under his head as he carefully lays his unresponsive body down, and Peter just wants to cry because not only is Dad going to lose him, he’s going to watch him go just like how Dr. Strange and the big alien guy and the weird antennae alien girl and the half-human space pirate went and he can’t even tell Dad how much he loves him, how scared he is, how much he wishes he’d stayed on planet like Dad had asked because this could’ve happened and Dad would never have had to witness it like he is now, because it makes it worse on Dad, because Peter knows he will believe he failed him when it's simply not the case, it's the reverse; it's Peter who's failed him because he gave him rules to follow and he's been breaking all of them except Rule Five this whole time.

Peter wants to tell him he’s sorry. He’s sorry for everything that’s happened over the past few years; everything with the Avengers and Bucky and Pops and Auntie Nat and Aunt Pepper and Uncle Rhodey and his own evolution on top of it all. He’s sorry for the pain he’s adding to the mountains of it that Dad already has, he’s sorry for not being able to stop this from happening, he’s sorry that he walked into his life at eleven years old just to walk right back out of it at sixteen years old, he’s sorry for the all the time over the past five or so years he’s wasted with petty arguments and hormonal phases of temper when he could’ve been expressing every day to Dad how much he loves him, he’s sorry for everything he couldn’t do right as a son that he’s never gotten to or will get to apologize for because he has to break the sixth unspoken rule of the Deal, the culmination of all of the rules into its final meaning—

“I don’t wanna go,” he says.

I don’t wanna die, he doesn’t say.

I’m afraid to die, he can’t say.

I just wanted to help, he will never say. 

I'm sorry, he can never say, because he's already gone. 

Six is to live.  


End file.
